Monday, April 20, 2009

Raining Titles, Other Updates

I've picked up a ton of titles in the last week or so:

the Argent Champion

the Explorer

Loremaster

Ambassador

of Stormwind (from the Argent Tournament)

If you're looking for money, get to the Champion level of the Argent Tournament as soon as possible. Each daily is worth 13g, and you can get an additional 10g from the Champion's Purse. (You can get a Writ instead of the Purse if you want Reputation instead.)

I'm still a terrible jouster, but I will share my super-secret jousting technique: Put up 3 shields and melee the opponent. When they start to move away, Shield-Break them and then close to melee range before they can charge you. Then continue meleeing. It's pretty slow, but it works all the time.

I'm a bit disappointed with the end of the Black Knight quest. It feels like Blizzard squandered an opportunity there.

Fishing in Wintergrasp is awesome. Pretty much the only fish you get are the ones needed for Fish Feasts, so it's the best place to fish for raid consumables.

Uldar is lots of fun. I've killed Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, XT-002, and Iron Council so far. My guild runs with 3 Holy paladins and 1 Resto Shaman, and I can't help but think life would be so much easier if the numbers were flipped.

I've decided to try a new technique of primarily healing with Holy Light and Holy Shock. The new Infusion of Light works out to an extra 6-10% crit rate for the next Holy Light. It seems pretty decent so far, but more testing is required. I'm even considering replacing Glyph of Flash of Light with Glyph of Holy Shock.

Still haven't got enough money for dual-spec, as raiding costs are chewing up the income from the dailies. I'm considering going Protection as my second spec. There's a really intriguing Prot build that skips Spiritual Attunement, opting to use Glyph of Seal of Blood for mana regen instead. It features really high threat and DPS, and its mana does not depend on incoming damage at all, potentially making it amazingly good for off-tanking. The cost, however, is the self-damage from Seal of Blood. But since Blood has been rebalanced away from the burst damage of the Judgement, the self-damage might be tolerable. I have no idea if this build will actually work, but it's a very interesting idea.

Also, I could use some help updating Raider 101 to 3.1. If you're up to speed on the new theorycraft for your class, please consider editing the page or leaving a comment.

Re: the 101. Elitist Jerks updated their Retribution Paladin posting to include the recent changes.

However, one thing that hasn't been pointed out on the opening page...

SoB/SoM has almost ZILCH for recoil. The mana I get back from the glyph (11% of the damage) isn't much, but it almost pays for a free AoW proc/topoff. I can see an OT using the seal for increased threat... it certainly does the job.

I'm really happy they changed the judgement effect though - now I can open with a judge and not worry as much about aggro issues.

Even just running a heroic VH last night (first time healing anything since the patch), I was really missing the crits from the HL glyph. I'm not sure if it was just seeing big numbers pop up or what, but I can specifically remember being able to keep a tank topped of quite easily just spamming HL and letting the glyph keep the other melee topped without really even needing to use FoL except on the ranged. I really really really wish they'd at least throw us a bone and reverse the HL glyph nerf. It wasn't a ton of extra healing, but the 2k crits were enough to at least keep someone alive long enough so that I get to them with a FoL after dropping a HL on the tank.

@anonymous, the other three healers are 2 druids and a disc priest usually. It's viable, but I can't help but feel it would be easier if we stacked shamans instead of paladins.

@forthebubbles, that's the question, isn't it. It really depends on the magnitude of the recoil. The old JoB had the potential of taking a large chunk of your health. The new SoB spreads the damage out better.

The first day as Valiant, it took me an hour and a half to win three matches :( This morning it took me 3 minutes :P Improvement is awesome!

Your jousting technique sounds almost there :) When they start to move away, instead of shield breaking and closing to melee range, charge and then shield break while you're closing to melee... that takes two shields off them instead of one, so you hit them for 3325 instead of 1400 or 1400 instead of 325.

Gotta say, I love the Argent Tournament :) It's so much fun!

I've noticed an interesting "feature" though... I am a draenei, exalted and maxed out with Exodar and a Valiant of Exodar... and the dailies are giving me Darnassus rep (only Darnassus). Has anyone else seen that?

For an offtank protection build, I'd recommend a 0/53/18 build -which is also a main tank build really- grabbing crusade and PoJ in ret (I like PoJ, otherwise just fill out conviction, but crit isn't that big of a threat boost for prot pallies and PoJ is priceless when you need it) and only going 1/2 SA in prot.

The threat is still really top notch, you sacrifice nothing in terms of mitigation and with divine plea + BoSanc + JoW + 1/2 SA you won't likely run low on mana. If you're taking any notable incoming damage at all, you may not need JoW (depends on the mobs and returns from BoS and other paladins in raid).

The only real debate is the value of divinity for an OT. I currently don't have it, but there are tanks who are looking more at this justifiably snubbed talent now that they're getting beaten into ground beef in Ulduar.

I've been tanking heroics with this spec and it's awesome. From an off-tank perspective, you may be called on to add tank. Picking up adds and keeping threat on multiple mobs isn't as easy as: /cast consecration. With reasonable AoE dps you'll likely want to use SoV to keep a DoT up on all the enemies in addition to consecration (which HoJ facilitates very nicely). It's still debatable and dependent on gear whether you take a big tps/dps drop from using SoB, but pre 3.1 with most tanking weapons being fast, SoV outstripped both SoB and SoR in raid gear. I'm guessing the changes to SoB made it so that it's probably better for single target fights now, but with the new divine plea changes in prot, mana efficiency should not be the reason to switch from SoV to SoB (and there are much better prot glyphs too).

@ascian, what's happening is that the quest is giving Reputation for all Alliance factions. If you weren't exalted, it would show up as "you gain XX reputation with the Alliance".

Because you're max exalted with the Exodar, it doesn't use that message, and only says you're getting Rep with Darnassus. But really you're getting Rep with all the alliance factions, if you look at the values before and after.

It's a display bug with the Reputation message. After you get max exalted with Darnassus, it will display a different city. You are still getting rep with all factions.

Between work,kids,sleep,and raid progression on Yogg-Saron(yes woot S.K. has reached Yogg in the first week),I haven't had anytime for the new title achievements or tournement =( This new content looks pretty fun,and the posts I have read support this.Maybe in a few weeks if my brain hasn't burnt out.

Congratulations on all your new titles Coriel! I bet the drop-down list is mighty long now.